The mental health community christened the
first psychological "syndrome" in 1980, when
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was officially recognized by
inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-III). Since that time, the investigative term
"profile" has slowly become synonymous with the
psychological term "syndrome" in the eyes of the legal
community. The process of criminal profiling in its
original form, as taught by Howard Teten and Pat Mullany at the
FBI beginning in 1969, was completely different in origins and
methodology from the construct of the psychological syndrome.
With time, however, the two terms "profile" and
"syndrome" have been wrongfully confederated because of
the way some profiles are constructed, and the subsequent
litigation [1], [2].

As the above infers, not all profiling
methodology is the same, due largely to the fact that not all
profilers are equally trained or able. In fact, this author will
propose that there are essentially two very different types of
profiling being done by criminal investigators and criminologists
in the United States. The first profiling method will be termed Inductive
Criminal Profiling, and is related conceptually to the
construction of psychological syndromes and subsequent syndrome
evidence. The second, less common, method of profiling will be
termed Deductive Criminal Profiling. The purpose of
this work is to overview the nature of Deductive Criminal
Profiling, and demonstrate how its origins, assumptions, and
methodology are fundamentally different from the origins,
assumptions, and methodology of Inductive Criminal Profiling,
and by inference syndrome evidence.

Inductive Criminal Profiling
& Syndromes

For legal purposes, according to Moenssens
et al [3], a syndrome or a profile is "a set of
behavioral indicators forming a very characteristic pattern of
actions or emotions that tend to point to a particular
condition." (note an emphasis on pointing to a condition,
lending itself to purposes of treatment).

A more useful description comes
from State of Oregon v. Lawson [4], where the defense
tried to introduce expert testimony stating that their client,
Mr. Lawson, did not match the profile of a sex offender, and by
extension of that logic could not therefore be one. The court in
that case found that "Whether it is labeled a 'syndrome' or
a 'profile', the type of evidence involves comparing an
individual's behavior with the behavior of others in similar
circumstances who have been studied in the past."

An Inductive Criminal Profile is
one that is generalized to an individual criminal from initial
behavioral and demographic characteristics shared by other
criminals who have been studied in the past. It is the product of
incomplete, statistical analysis and generalization (very often
without comparison to norms), hence the descriptor Inductive. This
author takes the descriptor from the phrase Inductive Statistics,
which is the branch of statistics involving generalizations,
predictions, estimations and decisions from data initially
presented [5].

The datasets currently used to
compile and statistically generalize Inductive Criminal Profiles
are collected largely from three sources:

Formal and
informal studies of known, incarcerated
criminal populations, and the inherent clinical and
non-clinical interviews upon which those studies are
based;

Practical
experience, from which isolated anecdotal
data is recalled by the profiler; and

Public data
sources, including the popular media (for
example, the FBI readily admits that newspaper
articles are collected by its personnel and used to
fill out its computerized database of violent
criminal offender activity in the United States).

Inductive
Criminal Profiling:

The
process of profiling criminal behavior, crime scenes, and
victims from the known behaviors and emotions suggested
by other criminals, crime scenes, and/or victims.

In essence, as the term suggests,
this is reasoning from initial statistical data to
specific criminal offender behavior. In any event,
Inductive Criminal Profiling is generally the result of
some kind of statistical analysis, or finds it's
reasoning in cases outside of the case at hand.

Example
of the logic:

80%
of known serial killers that attack college students in
parking lots are white males age 20-35 who live with
their mothers and drive Volkswagen Bugs-- Our offender
has attacked at least three female college students on
separate occasions; our offender has attacked all three
victims in parking lots.

Therefore, our offender, who is part
of this large group who fit this "profile"
called "serial killers" is a white male age
20-35, lives with his mother, and drives a VW Bug.

The advantages of the Inductive Criminal
Profiling model are readily apparent. Foremost is that Inductive
Profiling is a very easy tool to use, for which no specialized
forensic knowledge, education, or training in the study of
criminal behavior or criminal investigation is required.
Additionally, general profiles can be assembled in a relatively
short period of time without any great effort or ability on the
part of the profiler. The result is often a one or two page list
of unqualified characteristics. These generalizations can
accurately predict some of the non-distinguishing elements of
individual criminal behavior, but not with a great deal of
consistency or reliability.

There are currently a number of separate
initiatives under way in both the United States and Canada to
automate part or all of this process with databasing tools and
neural computer networks.

The major disadvantages of the Inductive
Criminal Profiling model are equally apparent to the critical
thinker. Firstly, the information itself is generalized from
limited population samples, and not specifically related to any
one case, therefore it is not by its nature intended for
reconstructing a "profile" of an individual person. It
is a generalized set of representations, averaged from a small
group of individuals who may or may not have been appropriately
sampled, depending on the knowledge and ability of the person
collecting and assembling the data. Secondly, and perhaps most
commonly noted, is that Inductive profiles are generalized
and averaged from the limited data collected only from known,
apprehended offenders. An Inductive Criminal Profile does not
fully or accurately take into account current offenders who are
at large, therefore it is by its very nature missing datasets
from the most intelligent or skillful criminal populations; the
criminals who are successful in continually avoiding detection by
law enforcement. A third major disadvantage is that, as with any
such generalization, an Inductive Criminal Profile is going to
contain specific inaccuracies that can and have been used to
implicate innocent individuals. This occurs when an Inductive
Criminal Profile is used as some sort of infallible predictive
measure by an unprofessional, trigger-happy profiler. Recent
examples include the 1996 case of Richard Jewell in the
"Olympic Park Bombing" and, also in 1996, the Colin
Stagg profile debacle in Great Britain.

Assumptions of the Inductive Criminal Profiling
model include:

Small groups of known offenders, who
commit the same types of crimes as unknown offenders,
have commonly shared individual characteristics that can
be accurately generalized back to initially similar
individual unknown offenders.

Offenders who have committed crimes in the
past are culturally similar to current offenders, being
influenced by at least similar environmental conditions
and existing with the same general and sometimes specific
motivations.

Individual human behavior and
characteristics can be generalized and even predicted
from the initial statistical analysis of characteristics
and behavior in very small samples.

Behavior and motivation do not change
within an individual over time, being static, predictable
characteristics

Inductive Profilers include the following
groups of professionals, who have various backgrounds:

FBI and ex-FBI profilers.
Current FBI profiles are on average less than a page long
and offer no explanation for the content of the profile.
Most law enforcement agencies that this author has
discussed the issue with have had little or no use for
those types of profiles. Nor do most courtrooms.

Forensic Psychologists and
Forensic Psychiatrists, who rely solely on
clinical personality measurements such as the MMPI, and
the interview process, when formulating any kind of
criminal personality profile.

Many of the law enforcement
profilers who have received FBI training,
including Georgia Bureau of Investigation, ATF, and
various state and local detectives.

Criminologists: a
criminologist is defined as someone who studies criminal
behavior. It does not imply training, education, or
experience. The term criminologist generally refers to
someone who does scholarly, scientific and professional
study concerning the etiology, prevention, control, and
treatment of crime and delinquency, including the
measurement and detection of crime, legislation, and the
practice of criminal law, the law enforcement, judicial,
and correctional systems. It is a category that, despite
its ambitious definition, can include almost anyone in
actual application.

The professional backgrounds of those listed
does not necessarily include forensic training in criminal
psychology, abnormal psychology, or psychopathology, and
certainly does not imply any kind of experience with
investigating violent serial criminals. For example, most people
are not aware that FBI agents do not have jurisdiction at any
homicide unless it occurs in a federal building or on an Indian
Reservation, giving most FBI agents no applied experience
investigating this type of crime whatsoever.

Deductive Criminal Profiling

A descriptive, applied definition
of the Deductive Criminal Profiling model, according to
this author, is: "The process of interpreting forensic
evidence, including such inputs as crime scene photographs,
autopsy reports, autopsy photographs, and a thorough study of
individual offender victimology, to accurately reconstruct
specific offender crime scene behavior patterns, and from those
specific, individual patterns of behavior, deduce offender
characteristics, demographics, emotions, and motivations."

Note the heavy emphasis on an
informed forensic reconstruction, and the exclusion of
information from other similar offenders, or other similar
offenses.

A Deductive Criminal Profile is
one that is deduced from the careful forensic examination and
behavioral reconstruction of a single offender's crime scene(s).
After the offender's behaviors have been reconstructed, the crime
scene characteristics are analyzed, and the victim
characteristics are analyzed. From those combined
characteristics, a profile with the characteristics of the
individual who could have committed that specific offense(s),
with that specific victim(s) under the conditions present at that
specific crime scene(s) is deductively inferred. It is a
forensically and behaviorally contained process. The process of
deductive profiling is most appropriately termed Behavior
Evidence Analysis, and depends on the analyst's abilities to
recognize patterns of behavior within a single offender to deduce
meaning.

Offender emotions during the
offense, individual patterns of offense behavior, and offender
personality characteristics are deduced from that particular
offender's crime scene behavior and victimology only.

Deductive
Criminal Profiling:

The
Behavioral Evidence Analysis a specific criminal, crime
scene(s), and victim(s) exclusively from forensic
evidence relating to the crime scene(s) and victim(s) of
that offender alone.

Example
of the logic:

The
body of a female victim is found nude in a remote forest
location with 4 shallow, careful incisions on the chest,
cutting across the nipples. The victim's genital areas
have all been removed with a sharp instrument. Petechiae
are evident in the eyes, neck and face above pattern
compression on the neck. No blood is found at the crime
scene. No clothes are found at the crime scene. The
victim bears ligature furrows around her wrists with
abraded contusions but no ligature is present. Fresh tire
impressions are found in the mud approximately 20 yards
from where the body is located.

Therefore the offender in
this particular offense bound the victim to restrain her
while she was still alive indicated by the abrasions
around the wrists associated with struggling. Our
offender removed the ligature before disposing of the
body, indicated by the fact that we didn't find it at the
scene. The victim was likely asphyxiated with a material
ligature about the neck, indicated by the pattern
compression and the petechiae. The location where the
body was found is a disposal site and not the actual
location of the offense indicated by the fact that no
blood was present at this location. The offender has a
vehicle consistent with the tire impressions and is
mobile. All of these details together indicate a
competent, intelligent offender whom is likely able to
sustain employment, and is very likely a sexual sadist.
This is deductively suggested by the vehicle, the use of
a secondary scene to dispose of the body to avoid
transfer evidence, the removal of the victim's genitals,
and the deliberate cutting to the victim's nipples
intended to cause pain but not seriously injure.

The data used to infer a Deductive
Criminal Profile for a particular criminal includes the
following:

Forensic Evidence:
A fullequivocal forensic
analysis must be performed before profiling can begin, to
insure the integrity of the behavior and the crime scene
characteristics that are to be analyzed. Nothing can be
assumed by the profiler.

Crime Scene
Characteristics: Crime scene characteristics are
determined from all forensic reports, all forensic
analysis, and all forensic documentation which provides
the nature of the interaction between the victim(s), the
offender, and the location(s) of the offense during the
occasion of a specific offense. In cases involving a
related series of offenses, such as in serial rape, or
serial homicide, crime scene characteristics are
determined individually and analyzed as they evolve, or
fail to evolve, over time. An offender's crime scene
characteristics, in a single offense or over multiple
offenses, can lend themselves to inferences about
offender motive, modus operandi, and the determination of
crime scene signature.

Victimology:
Victimology is the thorough study and analysis of victim
characteristics. The characteristics of an individual
offender's victim population of choice, in a single
offense or over time, can lend themselves to deductive
inferences about offender motive, modus operandi, and the
determination of crime scene signature. In
Deductive Profiling, almost as much time is spent
profiling each victim as the offender responsible for the
crime(s).

The advantages of the Deductive
Criminal Profiling model are very important. This model requires
specialized education and training in forensic science, crime
scene reconstruction, and wound pattern analysis. Because of this
requisite specialized knowledge, Deductive Criminal Profiles tend
to be more specific than Inductive Criminal Profiles, assisting
greatly in the major goal of the profiling process, which is to
move from a universal set of suspect characteristics to a more
unique set of suspect characteristics.

Deductive Criminal Profiling is
also useful for thoroughly establishing Modus Operandi behavior,
as well as offender signature behavior, which assists in the
linkage of seemingly unrelated crimes. According to Geberth
[6], the Modus Operandi, or MO behavior, or method of
operation, is a dynamic, learned behavior, changing over time, as
the offender becomes more experienced. It involves only those
actions that are necessary to commit the offense.

Signature behavior, or
the signature aspect of criminal behavior, as Geberth [7]
defines it, is comprised of those behaviors not required to
commit the offense. Signature is comprised of significant
personality identifiers that distinguish the nature of the
offender's crime scene methodology. These significant and highly
individualized personality identifiers are evident in such things
as:

When an offender
repeatedly engages in a specific order of sexual
activity;

When an offender
repeatedly uses a specific type of binding;

When an offender inflicts
similar types of injuries to different victims;

When an offender displays
the body in a certain manner for shock value;

When an offender tortures
and/or mutilates his victims, and/or engages in some
other form of specific ritualistic behavior.

Another very tangible advantage of
the Deductive Criminal Profiling method is that, because it so
thoroughly explores victimology, and the nature of the
interaction between the victim(s), the crime scene(s), and the
offender, it can very pointedly demonstrate an individual
offender's motivations in even the most bizarre or seemingly
senseless offenses. As Geberth insightfully reminds us in his
foundational work Practical Homicide Investigation, 3rd.
Ed., "No one acts without motivation." Deductive
Criminal Profiling techniques explore offender actions through
the physical evidence, through the victimology, and through the
crime scene as the primary behavioral and motivational
documentation, and illuminate that particular offender's
motivation. The whole profile is logic statement, based solidly
on the arguments made through an analysis of behavior patterns.

Also, due to this same
thoroughness, learned or experiential generalizations can be kept
from obscuring or misleading investigations. Investigators with a
lot of years on the job, or a lot of experience investigating a
particular type of crime, tend to formulate theories about a case
early on. Instead of investigating the case, they may instead
spend their efforts attempting to prove a theory. Deductive
Criminal Profiling precludes theory generation, and subsequent
bruised egos, until a full investigative analysis has been done.

The final major advantage of the
Deductive Criminal Profiling method is that it examines behaviors
of individual offenders as they occur over time. Change and
growth are allowed for, analyzed, and recompiled back into the
criminal profile. As something like offender MO behavior or
motivations change or evolve over the course of multiple offenses
in an offender's career, it is noticed and it used to better
understand the offender.

The disadvantages of Deductive
Criminal Profiling are somewhat few, but well worth noting. First
is that it is not a quick fix or a cure all; it requires a great
deal of effort and multi-disciplinary skill on the part of each
member of the investigative team. Second, because it is such an
intensive process, it can be extremely emotionally exhausting.
Investigators that learn to use these techniques should take care
to be emotionally grounded individuals and not be afraid to
discuss any emotional difficulties with those close to them. And
third, a Deductive Criminal Profile cannot not point out a
specific known individual and say with confidence that they are
likely responsible for a certain crime or series of crimes unless
that offender's unique signature is known and established.

Assumptions of the Deductive
Criminal Profiling method include:

No offender acts without
motivation.

Every single offense
should be investigated as its own unique behavioral and
motivational existent. Given the nature of human
behavior, no two cases are really ever alike.

Some offenders have unique
motivations and/or behaviors that should be individuated
from other similar offenders.

All human behavior
develops uniquely, over time, in response to
environmental and biological factors.

Criminal MO behavior can
evolve over time and over the commission of multiple
offenses.

A single offender is
capable of multiple motives over the commission of
multiple offenses, or even during the commission of a
single offense.

Statistical
generalizations and experiential theorizing, while
sometimes helpful, are incomplete and can ultimately
mislead an investigation, and encourage investigative
laziness. When we think that we have all of the answers
in a case, not only might we only collect evidence that
fits those answers, we might think that a thorough
investigation is no longer requisite at all.

Conclusions

The Inductive Profiling model, due
largely to the lack of uniform training and education on the part
of those who use it, has proven time and time again to be an
unreliable source of investigative guidance. No standard
terminology exists to describe offender behavior, and no
classifications that have been developed have been rigorously
validated, such as the crime scene classification efforts in the Crime
Classification Manual [8]. Furthermore, those classifications
have been developed using the same structure and philosophy as
the DSM, despite the intention that the DSM be used for the
purposes of treatment, and not being designed for the purposes of
criminal investigation. The adoption of this clinical model,
then, serves no other real purpose than to lend pseudo-clinical
credibility to the classification. The model arguably does not
serve the purpose that it was designed for.

Furthermore, initial statistical
analysis based on unproven classifications and non-uniform
terminology are no replacement for a thorough forensic
reconstruction, crime scene analysis, and victimological
assessment in either a criminal investigation or in a court of
law. Given this fact, and given the extensive liability of police
departments in high profile cases involving overzealous
investigators armed with Inductive Profile evidence, and the
general inadmissibility of Inductive "Profile" evidence
in a court of law, the practice of teaching investigators purely
Inductive Profiling methods should end.

The multi-disciplinary Deductive
Profiling method, though more time consuming in the investigative
end, will prove to be more effective because of its usefulness as
an investigative guide, its competency at linking crimes, and
because of its very high probative value in terms of thoroughly
establishing signature and motivation. In short, the Deductive
Profiling method encourages deliberation, competency,
thoroughness, and requires a high degree of intra- and
extra-departmental cohesiveness and communication. The Inductive
Profiling method encourages egocentricity, investigative
short-cuts, and has been used in the past to replace a competent
forensic investigation into fact.

In the past, when this author has
attempted to explain the Deductive Profiling process to
individuals involved in criminal investigations, those
investigators have said, "It sounds like you're trying to
trick us into doing more work." To which this author has
always responded, "You're right."